Aspire in the World Fellows Book - 2022

23 22 Gabarro was the best goal scorer. When you look at the overall contribution to the team, Hamano was highest for offers in behind as well as offers to receive the reception in a final third inside opponent shape. She was also high in offers leading to a defensive line break as well, which is absolutely vital. Her stats were above everybody else, and in the end, the technical study group decided to give play of a tournament to Hamano. She looked very good, but their belief was strengthened by the stats that she had shown during the tournament. Chris Loxton: We’ve just spoken about how we can better understand football globally and how that can be used to impact coaches and inform coaches and players. The second part of your vision was to try and use technical observations, football data, analytics, to try and improve the fan experience. We have a video that was played at the World broadcaster meeting earlier this year to try and explain what you will see on the TV screens during the World Cup. Video Voiceover: For 2022, FIFA will provide media rights licensees with a new and exciting set of enhanced statistics as part of the coverage of the FIFA World Cup. These newly developed metrics will be created by FIFA’s Football performance analysis and insights team consisting of high-level football analysts, data scientists, and data engineers. Arsène Wenger: Enhanced football intelligence is to explain to people and to understand better what is happening on the football pitch and why this is happening on the football pitch. Of course, to answer these two questions, it’s very important that football intelligence plays a big part in that. Overall, we would say we collect the data. We analyze where and what’s going on football pitch by defining a few criteria that we have selected to explain better what’s happening. Video Voiceover: The collection of all necessary data points needed to create metrics for enhanced football intelligence will be captured by the football data collection team and enriched with tracking data. Those metrics will then progress the way in which data is used to display the relationship between match performance and match outcome. A new series of performance data metrics will be available live during the matches. Allowing commentary, halftime, and full-time analysis to be more data supported and racing new areas of the game for MRLs to highlight and discuss within their productions. Here is an example of what those data metrics could look like using the last World Cup final. We can see on this animation line breaks; an opposition line is broken when the attacking team play the ball beyond the deepest player in that line. The most valuable line breaks are defensive line breaks. As this places the attacking team behind the opposition defense and increases their chance of creating scoring opportunities. We took advantage of the FIFA Arab Cup 2021 to conduct further tests as to the way match analysis can be enhanced with data. In this example, we looked at player pressure. Pressure is where a defensive player closes down the space between themselves and the player on the ball. Closing the space limits the time and options the player on the ball has. Chris Loxton: We were in London just before flying out here to Qatar, briefing the English-speaking commentators on what these new metrics are and how they can use them. What is your expectation that these new metrics will have on the fans? Arsène Wenger: We give media the opportunity to explain during the game what’s happening and what’s going on. We have an analyst who will basically watch the game with them and make our collection of data available and say, “You should show that at half time to explain what happened in the first half.” We give them data assistance basically to show better and to explain what’s going on. Chris Loxton: It’s not just going be on the TV. There’s a fan app that the fans will have inside the stadium. They can point their phone at the pitch and click on a player and it will give them the live data of that player during the game as well. Arsène Wenger: Yes, I hope I can watch the games in person, but we have made that available as well. Line breaks, that is a good example. You have white, red, and green line breaks behind the defensive line. That means in white you had three- line breaks over the defensive line. You had seven through the defensive line and you had four-line breaks around the defensive line. The television will get this and can show during the game. Chris Loxton: We can have a look at another example as well, which is team pressure. Arsène we are going to see this for example, per five minutes. At half time, you’ll have a graphic, and per five minutes you’ll be able to see if a team are then chasing, they need to score, do they then commit more players to try and press the ball higher up the pitch? Arsène Wenger: Usually that’s what happens. We can show that with images, but we’ll be capable of showing that in a significant way. You see where the pressure happens, when high up the pitch is where the pressure happens. Chris Loxton: Finally, we have 48 days until the World Cup. When we started this project, it was more than a thousand days. We had plenty of time. Now the time is tight. I would love to hear what you expect to see in this World Cup. Arsène Wenger: What I expect first is a great World Cup because I have come here for a long time and I know the country at the moment, but I know that there is a lot of expectation all over the world. What I expect as well personally is for the first time we have 32 countries in a very small space and that football can show fraternity and enjoyment together in moments where the world at the moment is especially not in a good shape, and football can be a unique example during this World Cup. We can contribute to peace and harmony in the world and of course have exceptional football games.